A partial shutdown of the US federal government was postponed by a
deal struck late Friday night between White House and congressional
negotiators to resolve a protracted standoff on legislation to finance
government operations.

The Obama administration agreed
to $2 billion more in social spending cuts in return for an agreement by
the Republican House leadership on a stop-gap continuing resolution
that will fund the federal government through next Thursday. President
Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
also said they had reached a broader agreement to fund government
operations through the end of the fiscal year, September 30, which is to
be voted on by both houses of Congress next week.

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The
deal reportedly includes between $39 billion and $40 billion in social
spending cuts in the current fiscal year budget, virtually the total
amount demanded by Boehner. This is the largest-ever single-year
reduction in domestic social spending.

Details are not
yet available of exactly which programs will feel the brunt of the
budget axe, but the cuts dwarf any previous austerity exercise. The cuts
are four times those imposed by a Republican Congress in 1995-96, the
only previous instance of a budget dispute forcing a partial shutdown of
the federal government.

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Speaking from the White House
shortly after 11 PM, President Obama hailed the agreement as a boon to
the American people, even as he acknowledged that it would entail
"painful" sacrifices. In the course of his brief remarks, Obama twice
boasted that he had signed on to "the largest annual spending cut in our
history." Eager to send a signal that this deal was only a down-payment
on far more sweeping cuts in social programs to come in the fiscal year
2012 budget, he said the agreement signified "beginning to live within
our means."

Nearly one million federal workers had been
given notice of layoff at their workplaces Friday, about half the total
workforce. The shutdown would have affected the majority of civilian
government workers, but US military and police forces, the intelligence
agencies and the Department of Homeland Security were exempted and told
to continue normal operations.

The driving force of the
budget crisis has been the Republican-controlled House of
Representatives, which demanded even greater cuts in current spending
than the record $38 billion offered by the Obama administration. Many in
the ultra-right Tea Party caucus regarded a shutdown of all
non-military parts of the government as a positive good, while Christian
fundamentalists demanded further restrictions on abortion rights as the
price of passing a budget.

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The final hours of
negotiations reportedly focused on the continuation of $333 million in
federal funding for women's health services provided by Planned
Parenthood, which operates 800 health centers throughout the United
States, the majority of them serving women in working class and
low-income neighborhoods.